Jerry Iger

Samuel Maxwell Iger

(22 August 1903 - 5 September 1990, USA)

Jerry Iger had no formal art training, but in 1925 he broke into the field as a news cartoonist for the New York American. In the early 1930s, Iger created features like 'Sheena', 'The Flamingo' and 'Inspector Dayton' for Editors Press Service. He soon became one of the first people involved in the comic book business, founding his own Phoenix Features Syndicate. His strips 'Bobby', 'Peewee' and 'Happy Daze', published in Famous Funnies, are among the first ever produced especially for comic books.

Iger was the editor of Wow! What a Magazine in 1936 and published the first work of Bob Kane, Dick Briefer and Will Eisner. With Eisner, he formed the S.M. Iger Studios in 1937, which eventually became known as the Eisner-Iger Shop. Under Iger's guidence, the shop produced a large amount of comic books, for which Iger often provided the scripts (using pseudonyms like Jerry Maxwell and S.M. Regi). Amongst his production were Jumbo, Jungle, Planet and Wings for Fiction House, and series like 'Shark Brodie', 'Neon', 'Firebrand', 'Shory Shortcake', 'Strange Twins' and a reprise of 'Sheena'.

When Eisner left in 1939, the studios continued as the Iger Shop. A true comics factory, the studios worked for companies like Fox, Quality, Harvey, Holyoke, MLJ, Crown, EC and Farrell. In the mid-1940s, Iger worked for Gilberton's Classic Comics, and from 1953, he set up a comics version of Mickey Spillane's 'Mike Hammer'. Jerry Iger was one of the pioneers of comic books, but he closed his studio in 1955, and went to work as an advertising artist, teacher and editorial director at Ajax. He lived well into his eighties, and died in a New York nursing home in September 1990.